With more than 25 players onstage at at Stubbs BBQ, an outdoor arena the size of a football field , Polyphonic Spree debuted at SXSW in March, 2003, less than a week before the U.S. invaded Iraq. Song by song their performance elevated what was then a multitude of stressed out, disagreeable music fans, all concerned, one way or another, for their county. By the end of the set, if they hadn't achieved Nirvana, they at least had found their happier selves, the selves that smile and wave their arms, and appreciate that their fellow humans can feel the same.

On the brink of war with Syria, and amid reflections on how much work remains undone for dreamers like, not only Martin Luther King, but young neighbors caught in immigration battles, Monday night's performance at Hotel Congress brought a ray of light, and, for a set, a bushel of gladness, to a hundred or so gathered acolytes.

Hippy trippy? Haters gon' hate. People with an open heart gon' hope.